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Comment by phkamp | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if you bothered to check who wrote that article, before you started speculating about things you could have found out with a few google searches ?

You seem to assume that cathedrals are "slow-moving, centralized, big up-front" designs, where did you get that idea ?

Ever looked into how USA put a man on the moon ?

Maybe you should. Also: Read Brooks book, if you can.

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Why does it matter who you are? I've tried to respond to what you wrote.

Why do you think most of the software we build now is like putting a man on the moon? I think it's nothing like that.

Maybe I should read Brook's book (I've enjoyed MMM), but your article doesn't make a strong case for it.

> Why does it matter who you are? I've tried to respond to what you wrote.

Because you claim he's attacking open source software, and you said that maybe he thinks MS is the standard bearer of his cause.

The (easy to find) facts are that he has committed a lot of code to open source and has been involved in freeBSD for many years. These are not small trivial bits of code used by a few people or for insignificant reasons. Crypt and varnish are bits of code getting billions of uses.

If the author's open-source credentials are part of his argument, then he needs to make them part of the story he tells in his article. He shouldn't assume that people will connect the dots (he doesn't have the name recognition of a Torvalds or Stallman). Further, even with the context, I don't think the dots add up to enough of a picture to understand what he's arguing for/against.

To make a convincing argument, he should have made it clearer what he was arguing against ("the bazaar" is too nebulous and refers to many things, .com development refers to other things) and what he was arguing for (which was entirely missing, other than a reference to Brooks' book). If he doesn't have a clear vision of how development should work (or a "standard-bearer"), he should have at least provided some examples of things working the "right" way (or better).

He should probably also have left off a bunch of the insults and hyperbole: "clueless" / "hacks" / .com period a "disaster" for code quality. I'm frankly pretty surprised that ACM Queue would publish this.

> If the author's open-source credentials are part of his argument, then he needs to make them part of the story he tells in his article.

PHK is one of the most prolific contributors to Queue. Most regular ACM readers know who he is.

> I'm frankly pretty surprised that ACM Queue would publish this.

Again, see above.

In addition to what chrisaycock said, phks writings are typically very "lacking" and assumes a certain knowledge about whatever he has chosen to write about. He writes interesting stuff, a lot is implied and/or not very sufficiently explained.

Or maybe, just maybe I don't write for the lowest common denominator, but for people who can think for themselves.

I'm really grateful for you writing this. I don't know if I'd couch it in the Cathedral/Bazaar terminology, but I've had similar thoughts.

He's also a little bit fond of personal attacks.

A bizarre feature of some of the developer mailing lists and Usenet groups is the absolutely hateful vicious toxic nature of them.

OP's site bikeshed.org (http://bikeshed.org/) has some nice proposed features for software that posts to large audiences.

     +------------------------------------------------------------+
      | Your email is about to be sent to several hundred thousand |
      | people, who will have to spend at least 10 seconds reading |
      | it before they can decide if it is interesting.  At least  |
      | two man-weeks will be spent reading your email.  Many of   |
      | the recipients will have to pay to download your email.    |
      |								   |
      | Are you absolutely sure that your email is of sufficient   |
      | importance to bother all these people ?                    |
      |								   |
      |                  [YES]  [REVISE]  [CANCEL]                 |
      +------------------------------------------------------------+

      +------------------------------------------------------------+
      |	Warning:  You have not read all emails in this thread yet. |
      |	Somebody else may already have said what you are about to  |
      |	say in your reply.  Please read the entire thread before   |
      |	replying to any email in it.                               |
      |								   |
      |			     [CANCEL]                              |
      +------------------------------------------------------------+

Perhaps any forum software needs these, as well as buttons saying [really post this?] [save this angry version locally, and give you time to write a calmer version] etc.

I remember that my newsreader back in the early 1990s did exactly this. I had trouble posting the first few times because I took the message to heart and didn't want to waste other people's time. But I quickly realized that other people didn't follow the same suggestion, which meant that I should ignore the message, and even interpret it as wrong.

Why is it wrong? For example, consider the second message. Suppose you haven't read all the messages in a thread because you've been on holiday for the previous few days. But a friend pointed you to a message in the thread which specifically mentions your name, asks "could you verify this for me?", and doesn't have any followups?

Why should your newsreader force you to read all of the thread in order to answer something which isn't in the rest of the thread? Yet the only option there is "cancel".

Furthermore, "at least 10 seconds" is completely wrong. People killthread, plonk people, and develop other ways to ignore discussions. Assuming 4 hours per day means people can handle at most 1440 messages. There are 276 comments already in this thread, but I expect most people sampled a few messages on each major branch, skimmed a bit, and perhaps did a text search to see if someone mentioned a key word. Most assuredly, the entire HN readership did not read this entire thread.

I think Munksgaard is supporting you, and that there are some problems with different languages.

Indeed, it was not meant as an attack, merely trying explain his style. I enjoy reading his blog posts, but I readily admit that I often have to seek out some sort of elaboration, as it's not always evident what his stance is, or even what he's talking about (I often wish he'd provide some more context).

Because no words are without context.

Actually, the nicest thing about HN for me is that I get to see my words evaluated on their own merit rather than what people know about me. HN has made me a better thinker and better communicator. Over the past year or so that I have contributed, I have clearly seen the way my thoughts diverge from the reality of what others believe. Sometimes I disagree and stop convincing people, other times I present arguments which are stubborn, but backed up.

You took the time to write a long essay, and present a novel idea. A lot of posters here disagree with you, but the mindset on HN has been to build first ask questions later. Convincing people in a single day to change their world view would be a huge undertaking regardless of whether you are thinking about it correctly or not.

And that is probably a good way to filter through the million monkeys.

But some topics would require entire books to present in a context free way, this is one of them, and I don't have the time and money to write that book, so you will have to make do with a column @ACM.

When I read something, and have the nagging feeling that there is context I'm missing, I go looking for that context, usually starting with "who the heck wrote this", rather than assume that the writer is a clueless bozo.

But whatever blows your hair back buddy...

I enjoyed your post, but I also understand why people hated it. They hated it because you presented an idea that is completely at odds with the way many HN readers think. Then, rather than sitting back and watching the discussion you became offended and went on an aggressive warpath.

You didn’t even consider that what I wrote was meant as a complement to the fact that you are taking a view that no one else currently takes. An idea that has real merit and is worth discussion. You took my comment as an insult and wrote:

“But whatever blows your hair back buddy...”

That is not an insult in my book.

To me it means: If you're happy what you're doing, then who am I to tell you're wrong ?

> I wonder if you bothered to check who wrote that article,

I don't think the appeal to authority fallacy will fly here. We are all too smart for that.

You arguments should be evaluated for their coherence and, in the end, it really doesn't matter who you are or what you did if you are wrong.

To use your example, it doesn't matter if you are Von Braun himself. If you don't bring enough propellant for your descent engine, you'll still crash on the Moon.

The point isn't an appeal to authority, it's that the author is a supporter of open source. Not Microsoft.

That is, unfortunately, rather the point. Microsoft is one of the best current examples of the cathedral. The extent that FreeBSD is not-Microsoft is the exact extent that it is more bazaar-like.

Your essay was unbalanced, yes open source sucks in the way you complained about, but Microsoft sucks even worse in some ways (if not quite as badly in others). Complaining about something in isolation is easy; everything sucks compared to perfection. But how is it compared to the real alternatives.

It amazes me that the argument against this is by attacking some "standard-bearer of his cause." Let's not ask how it is compared to existing alternatives, or to 'perfection', but rather the potential alternatives. Your argument is akin to "stop talking about 'engines'; horse-drawn carriages might suck, but so does walking."

He's not talking about engines though, but at about some golden age in Unix's history when All was Right. Or at least that's part of what I got from it.

He also mentions 'one person having responsibility'. Does he mean a benevolent dictator? Linux and Python have that. They're imperfect in their own ways too.

Who said anything about Microsoft ?

I think it's a cultural reflex. Microsoft has been paying so many people to criticize open source for so long that the first reaction when people see what they interpret as baseless criticism is to look for Ballmer's sweaty palm prints.

I understand where you stand and agree some of your criticism is valid, but "quality" doesn't have the same meaning for everyone.

it's a prominent example of the "cathedral" model.

First, it's actually not, because their architecture is focused on architecting a market, not a computing solution.

Second, just because there is one bad example of a cathedral, doesn't mean the cathedral model is bad.

Many years ago, a fella named Gettys (look him up!) wrote as part of sage advice for OSS philosophy:

"The only thing worse than generalizing from one example, is generalizing from no example at all."

> Second, just because there is one bad example of a cathedral, doesn't mean the cathedral model is bad.

right, but this could be applied to your example of the "configure" script as an indictment of the "bazaar" model too. Surely there's software that's come from the "bazaar" model that you feel is of high quality ? There's none whatsoever ?

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